"If true-emphasis on IF- Sessions must go. Now," Bharara, a former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York who was fired by Trump in March, wrote on Twitter.

If true-emphasis on IF- Sessions must go. Now. "The attorney general wanted one negative article a day in the news media about Mr. Comey, according to a person with knowledge of the meeting."https://t.co/UDfG036fzg

Sarah Isgur Flores, a spokeswoman for the Justice Department, denied the account described in the Times report.

“This did not happen and would not happen,” she told the Times. “Plain and simple.”

Before his ouster, Comey was leading the law enforcement investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election and possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Moscow.

Sessions recused himself from overseeing that investigation in March, after The Washington Post reported that he had failed to disclose meetings with the Russian ambassador to the U.S. during Trump's 2016 campaign.

According to the report, Trump sent a lawyer to lobby Sessions not to recuse himself from the probe, and was furious after he did.